The "dumpling-dropping" game of launching warships had never been fun. It tested not only a nation's industry, but also the depth of its pockets.
One only had to look at the military budget to know. Influenced by the shipbuilding race, the Holy Roman Empire Navy's 1904 naval budget had risen by a full hundred million.
Clearly, not all that money could have gone toward building ships. Constructing a dozen or so capital ships alone would not cost that much; more of it was still spent on supporting facilities and expanding the fleet.
Since the end of the Continental War, the Holy Roman Empire Navy had embarked on a path of rapid development. In order to compete for military funding, the navy had even joined forces with the air force a few years earlier to pressure the army.
Though they had not succeeded, the navy's share of military spending had still increased somewhat. With the arrival of the "super-dreadnought era," the Holy Roman Empire Navy had also entered its golden age.
Since 1900, several of the Holy Roman Empire's naval academies had begun expanding enrollment. Their annual admissions had gradually grown from just over two thousand cadets to more than three thousand a year.
That was naturally incomparable to the army's lavish intake of more than ten thousand recruits annually, but the navy's demand for officers was nowhere near as great as the army's.
The reason was very simple. At present, the Holy Roman Empire Navy's primary strategic objective was to defeat the British, not to maintain world hegemony.
To achieve that goal, building capital ships remained the most cost-effective option. Other vessels, such as battlecruisers, might seem highly useful, but they were not economical in a decisive battle.
It was not that there were no black technologies, but they were